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I've made a sourdough starter before, and there was some initial activity before fermentation appeared to stop, and then after a few days it started again and s

by mrob 8y ago

I've made a sourdough starter before, and there was some initial activity before fermentation appeared to stop, and then after a few days it started again and settled into a steady state with consistent activity after feeding. I don't know what caused the initial activity, but one candidate is Clostridium perfringens, which is potentially fatal if eaten raw. Clostridium perfringens is actually used as a raising agent in "salt-rising bread", which is generally considered safe if thoroughly cooked, but what if I was fermenting something intended to be eaten raw, like sauerkraut sometimes is? I expect harmless lactic acid bacteria will eventually kill the competing microbes, but they won't necessarily be the first to colonize the food. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt-rising_bread https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt-rising_bread

MegaDeKay 8y ago
I've had my starter going for many years. What you saw was extremely unlikely to be Clostridium perfringens. The very article you linked says "salt-rising bread starter requires a shorter incubation period of 6–16 hours and a higher incubation temperature, ranging from 38–45 °C". I've made salt-rising bread before a number of times, and I use my immersion circulator to maintain the temperatures that encourage its growth. I think salt rising bread is delicious, though my wife is a bit put off by the smell. And from the fact that she wrote up a bunch of necropsy reports on animals where one of the factors that led to their demise was Clostridium perfringens. But, as Howard McGee (author of the amazing On Food And Cooking) writes, there is a "lack of any known cases of the bread causing illness". His article on the topic is pure awesome. https://www.popsci.com/article/science/clostridium-it-can-kill-you-or-it-can-make-you-bread https://www.popsci.com/article/science/clostridium-it-can-ki...

by mrob 8y ago

MegaDeKay 8y ago

I've had my starter going for many years. What you saw was extremely unlikely to be Clostridium perfringens. The very article you linked says "salt-rising bread starter requires a shorter incubation period of 6–16 hours and a higher incubation temperature, ranging from 38–45 °C". I've made salt-rising bread before a number of times, and I use my immersion circulator to maintain the temperatures that encourage its growth. I think salt rising bread is delicious, though my wife is a bit put off by the smell. And from the fact that she wrote up a bunch of necropsy reports on animals where one of the factors that led to their demise was Clostridium perfringens. But, as Howard McGee (author of the amazing On Food And Cooking) writes, there is a "lack of any known cases of the bread causing illness". His article on the topic is pure awesome. https://www.popsci.com/article/science/clostridium-it-can-kill-you-or-it-can-make-you-bread https://www.popsci.com/article/science/clostridium-it-can-ki...